


The Same Constellations

by Navigatrix



Category: Black Sails
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:00:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27448270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Navigatrix/pseuds/Navigatrix
Summary: Set between Parts 4 and 5 of @ifinkufreaky’s epic The Heart of Admiration series, we’ve got angsty Vane, voice of reason Jack, and firmly in denial Hope. Are these disaster pirates learning to talk to each other?
Relationships: Charles Vane/Original Character(s), Charles Vane/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	The Same Constellations

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Heart of Admiration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24341695) by [ifinkufreaky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifinkufreaky/pseuds/ifinkufreaky). 



Jack Rackham shakes his head in disappointment at the fresh cuts and bruises on Charles Vane’s face. “At this rate, by week’s end it will be a minor miracle if you have any skin left at all. I suppose I should just be grateful you’re leaving the opium alone.”

Instead of answering verbally, or even sitting up, Vane lobs an empty rum bottle past his quartermaster’s head. Both men are well aware that he missed on purpose.

Unperturbed, Jack continues. “If you need to work off some, shall we say, frustration, the men have glowing things to say about the local brothels.”

Vane just glares at Jack. He already tried that back in Nassau. Whores who bore any physical resemblance whatsoever to Hope. Whores who looked as dissimilar to Hope as possible. Somehow he felt even worse afterwards. Emptier.

“That motherfucker said Hope needs to be taken down a peg. He was laughing about how he wants to hurt her.”

“So you felt a need to take on him and several of his men all at once. Was she even present when he said whatever he said?”

Vane drags himself upright. “No.”

“Then maybe a better use of your energies would be spending time with her.”

Vane acts as though he didn’t hear a word of it.

Jack lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Chaz, Hope isn’t Eleanor. She isn’t going to betray you because she wants to get ahead or because she’s bored or because it’s Thursday.”

“Fuck you, Jack.”

Jack throws up his hands. “By all means, continue to get in brawls with all of Tortuga. That is certainly more sensible than, oh, as a brief example, talking to her. I’m sure she’ll be very grateful that she lost her old crew only for you to get yourself killed in some idiotic fight.”

Vane’s chin juts out dangerously. Jack doesn’t know what it was like when he was a child and the overseers made sure to take away anything they even thought he and the other slaves wanted. How Eleanor did more of the same, used everything he even hinted at wanting against him, just to prove she could. But Vane has to begrudgingly admit that Jack, damn the man, is right about one thing: Hope isn’t at all like Eleanor. “Seems likely she’d be relieved.”

“I highly doubt that.” Jack pauses, and though Vane’s thin lips curl in a silent snarl, he’s listening. “The night we backed up Mackinaw on the beach, she stood with you.”

“She told me I was foolish.”

“Yet she stood with you anyway. You didn’t see her face when she lost sight of you in the scrum, or when she saw you were still standing. I did.” 

And she caught him when he stumbled on his wounded leg. The memory of her body tucked warm under his arm as she steadied him, her hand over his heart, was something that kept him awake, made him restless. Her voice, telling him he had been foolish, but noble...“And?”

“And she’s currently at the Cat’s Head eating her supper and assisting me in hunting up leads. Perhaps you would like to clean yourself up and join her.”

\----------

Tortuga hadn’t changed much while she was in Nassau, and Hope feels no small relief to be back in its familiar surroundings, where she isn’t a newcomer yet to learn the major players and where, she thinks dryly as she finishes her meal, she hasn’t made enemies of the tavern owner or fence. Out of the corner of her eye, Hope glimpses a blond man in the clothes of a working pirate strolling toward her. She turns her head to meet a pair of green eyes and a broad grin and oh, son of a bitch, what are the odds that Liam O'Malley would be here with some of his crew.

"Hope Wickham! I didn’t know you were back in Tortuga!”

"Temporarily. Are you still on the _Shrike_?"

"Aye, got elected Captain a couple of months ago. You don't happen to be looking for a position, by any chance?"

“I appreciate the offer, but I've got one."

"That's a shame. I could use a good navigator. You're not still with Fisher's crew?"

“No, Charles Vane’s.” 

O’Malley lets out a low whistle. “Look at you, then. Well, if you change your mind, you know how to find me.” She gives him a friendly hug and promises to have a proper catch-up soon. 

She turns around to see Vane standing several paces away, watching, body stiff and his face a thundercloud. He gives her a hard stare then turns on his heel and storms off.

Hope excuses herself to follow her captain, hurrying after his long strides, wondering what set him off. She’s relieved to see that he’s no longer favoring his injured leg; when she asked if he needed help getting the stitches out, he grumbled at her to stop fussing. She later learned that he made a temporary truce with Doctor Mills, the ship’s surgeon, to assist him with that task, though immediately thereafter the two men each returned to pretending that the other did not exist.

She catches up with him on the jetty, where he’s leaning his forearms on the railing and staring out to sea. Hope senses a kind of bleakness radiating from him. He turns his head at her approach, then goes back to watching the tide roll in.

Hope comes to a halt beside him and furrows her brows as she examines the new injuries to his face. “Who did this to you?”

He grunts. “Does it matter?”

She rolls her eyes heavenward, refusing to dignify that with a response. “If you were planning on getting in fights, you could have told me.” 

“So you could try to talk me out of it?”

“And so I could have your back if that didn’t work.”

Vane turns toward her with guarded eyes and his jaw clenched tight. “The men I fought insulted you.”

“Captain Vane, I didn’t go to sea because I wanted an easy life or a safe one. I know there are men who will always resent me and talk shit about me because of my sex. If you try to fight them all, you’ll never have time to eat or piss.” She never considered Charles Vane the type to defend a woman’s honor like that, and she most certainly does not need him to defend hers, but she’s surprised by how touched she is that he felt a need to stand up for her when she wasn’t there. 

“Are you going to sign your friend’s articles?” 

Hope doesn’t try to hide her shock. He thought she accepted O’Malley’s offer? "I told him I’m not looking for another position."

“Do you think he’ll leave it at that?”

“It’s not at all up to him, but yes, he will. We go way back.”

Vane merely raises his scarred brow.

She takes a deep breath and attempts to summon her patience. "If you're wondering whether I used to be with O'Malley, the answer is no. He's a friend, and we used to sail together when we were both apprenticing, but things were never...like that between us." She isn’t sure why she needs Vane to know this. It’s none of his business that she has never been with O’Malley, or for that matter, with any other man, just as it would not be his business if she had bedded every man on Tortuga.

He looks at her coolly. “It isn’t that.”

Hope feels her heart jump, but she refuses to back down. "What then?" She meets his blue eyes squarely.

"I’m concerned for you."

It’s Hope’s turn to arch a brow.

"I know some of his men from Nassau. They're shits, and you would be a woman alone with them." 

She lets out an exasperated sigh. "I can look after myself." How is the man so consistently irritating? And why does she feel a pang in her chest when she recalls the look of hurt that flickered across his face, fleeting as it was, when he saw her hugging O’Malley?

Vane's scowl lessens. "I know you can. But you shouldn't have to, not amongst your own."

"It's a moot point anyway. Unless you're firing me, I have no intention of leaving your crew." 

She swears she sees some of the tension go out of his shoulders.

"You always have a place with me." His voice is quiet, as gentle as that scraping rasp allows. 

Hope wasn’t worried that her position was in any danger to begin with, so why does she feel so...warmed by his words? It makes no sense. There is no calculation she can run or measurement she can take to solve this puzzle. The words tumble from her mouth before she can think to stop them. “Then that is exactly where I’ll be.” 

A smile crosses his face, bright as a flash of sunlight on the water and just as brief, before his expression turns grave once more. “So long as you recall that you have a choice.” He needs her to know she isn’t trapped. He needs to know that she knows she isn’t trapped.

"That you give me the choice is exactly why I stay on with you." She pauses, trying to figure out how to explain. “The moment you realized you had not given me free choice to be on your crew, you made it right. You listened to me, and you made it right. That means a great deal.”

Vane nods. Exhales slowly. They stand side by side in companionable silence. After a time, she speaks again. "When I first went on the account, I sailed with a man from Timbuktu. He told wondrous stories about his homeland, of vast ever-shifting seas of burning sand where the only way to navigate is by the stars, same as we do at sea. He'd speak to me at night while I was working, because he had a daughter about my age who he missed terribly. We used the same stars to find the way, he and I, but we called them by different names. We used the same constellations but saw in them different creatures. Neither of us were wrong, and we got to the same answers, but if asked to explain how we did it, we would say very different things." Hope turns her head so she can look him in the eye, not in challenge, but trying to will him to understand. 

“You think when we disagree, we’re sometimes looking at the same thing in different ways.” 

“Just so.” 

Vane’s hand reaches over to cover hers. He starts to step closer, ever so slightly, when a breathless, sweaty-faced Jack comes running down the jetty towards them. “I’ve got it, Charles! I’ve got the lead we were seeking. But there are _people...”_ His eyes slide over to Vane’s hand, which is still wrapped firmly around Hope’s. He startles and nearly jumps backward a pace when he realizes that he interrupted them. 

“Then we’d best go _talk_ _to_ those people,” Vane growls. He glances down at Hope with the faintest shadow of a grin. “Luckily we’ve got a skilled negotiator who isn’t afraid to knife a man.”

Hope snorts and makes a wry face. He had never before mentioned the corpse she’d left in his cabin during the first raid she went on with him.

As she walks beside her captain, his words keep ringing in her ears. _You always have a place with me._


End file.
